Do the boys like it? ... Dickens World under construction. Photograph: Linda Nylind

Sandwiched between a cinema multiplex and a factory outlet, and housed in a hangar the size of four football pitches, Dickens World is a theme park based on the Victorian answer to Mickey Mouse. Opening in Kent at the end of next month, it's a day out for the family that brings to life the 15 novels by Charles Dickens; actually make that 13 - they haven't managed to squeeze in Barnaby Rudge or Bleak House. Never mind that the books tackle child exploitation, poverty, murder and domestic violence; the indoor attraction is based on designs by the creator of Santa World in Sweden so the emphasis is firmly on fun, fun, fun.

Dickens World feels like Disney gone to the dark side. In place of the Magic Kingdom there is Newgate Prison; instead of talking animals there will be shady characters loitering in dark corners. Although the attractions are all faithfully Dickensian, the larks are very much 21st century. The centrepiece is a boat ride which, loosely speaking, is Great Expectations presented as a log flume. It's the longest of its kind in Europe. I found it fairly hard going but then I did wade through it in wellington boots several sizes too big on a day when it had sprung a leak. Builders were busy draining all 210 metres of it. Where's Brunel when you need him? I imagine it's a more leisurely affair in a boat, which will travel through a Victorian sewer, past a graveyard and on to a crypt showcasing a greatest hits of Dickensian villains. The boat then rises over the rooftops of a dilapidated London skyline illustrating Abel Magwitch's bolt from the capital (that's the Great Expectations bit) before splashing back down.

The whole project cost £62m and hopes to present Dickens to coaches of schoolchildren without having to call in the Muppets for backup. But it isn't just an expensive gesture to introduce The Mystery of Edwin Drood to a pre-teen audience. Dickens World has been nearly 40 years in the making. Originally slated to open in London's King's Cross, before being forced out by rising property prices, it is now based in the historic dockyards of Chatham. The location was chosen because Dickens' father used to work there; an alternative site in Ashford was turned down because it had no connection to the author. "If you were doing Robin Hood you wouldn't want to set it in the West Country, would you?" says managing director Kevin Christie.

Capitalising on the author's ever-increasing popularity, the organisers are expecting 300,000 visitors a year. Amazon reported that orders for Dickens' books shot up by 160% last year, thanks largely to the BBC serialisation of Bleak House, which was sold to 24 different countries. With the bicentenary of his birth set to coincide with the 2012 Olympics in London, we could be in for a whole new wave of Dickens-mania. Members of the Dickens Fellowship want to promote the author as a "presiding spirit of the games", on the basis that he is one of the best-known cultural figures associated with the capital.

The nay-sayers to Dickens World appear firmly in the minority. Even hardcore fans believe that this Thorpe Park interpretation of Victorian literature is a natural evolution for Tiny Tim and friends. Why not immortalise Charles Dickens like Mickey Mouse? With his long hair, bushy beard and fancy waistcoats, Dickens was the closest the 19th century had to a pop star. There were more than 200 different images of the author in circulation while he was alive, making him instantly recognisable. He was a celebrity, says Paul Schlicke, author of Dickens and Popular Entertainment. "When he first went to America in 1842 he was greeted that way. His trip there was rather like the Beatles going to New York more than a century later."

Dickens' books have never gone out of print. And at the height of his popularity there existed a lucrative industry in unofficial souvenirs - from Pickwick hats to Samuel Weller corduroys. Bonnets became know as Dolly Vardens after a character in Barnaby Rudge; umbrellas as Gamps after Mrs Gamp from Martin Chuzzlewit.

Purists don't even appear that perturbed by a soft play area called Fagin's Den. That's the same Fagin who ran a petty-theft sweatshop and beat children with a toasting fork - not an obvious person to name a creche after. "There's something very attractive about Fagin and about the atmosphere that he creates for children in his employ," says Leon Litvack, trustee of the Dickens Museum and professor at Queens University Belfast. "There is a sinister motive but Dickens treats that with humour. Oliver's life there is better than it was in the workhouse."

The plan is to artfully side-step the more gruesome aspects of Dickens' work while still remaining faithful to the Victorian period - so no need to worry about rats and poor sanitation in the restaurant. "I would hope that what we are doing is as much about history as Dickens storylines," says Christie, who has been working on the project since 2000. "Visitors are not going to come here to be depressed so our role is to entertain them. We're not going to have starving babies crawling around on the cobblestones. If you're coming from Japan or America what you're probably going to want to see is a realisation of what you think London might be like, but is no longer."

In this respect, the theme park ticks all the nostalgia boxes: cobbled streets; gas lamps; pre-weathered period buildings; authentic shops bulging with boiled sweets, wooden toys and elaborately decorated tinned goods. Populated by actors sporting stays, hooped skirts and extravagant facial hair, it's Chessington in crinolines. Why do we find this period so fascinating? "British culture is in many ways indebted to the Victorians," says Schlicke, "and many of the Victorian ideas strike home today, such as the focus on individual values, the rights of ordinary people, the desire for a just society. It was a very idealistic time, a very hopeful time. People felt there were a great many social and intellectual problems that were there for the solving."

In tribute to Dickens' most beloved story, A Christmas Carol, there are plans to change the attraction seasonally with snow and carol singing, although when I visited there was only the sound of buzzsaws screeching as workers in hard hats, instead of stove-pipe hats, raced to finish the project. Piles of sawdust blew about where there may one day be a Dickensian blizzard. They had also yet to mount the logo on the front of the building which pictures Dickens, the Artful Dodger, Bill Sikes' dog and Little Nell enjoying the thrills of the Dickens World water ride. That's the same Little Nell who died of physical exhaustion at the climax of the Old Curiosity Shop; clearly she's recovered her health. What would Dickens have made of it all?

"If it's done right it can exploit precisely the kind of thing that made Dickens popular in his own day," says Schlicke. "It should be full of vitality, entertaining, promote gregariousness and enjoyment of ordinary people. Those are all the values Dickens held very close to himself".